Using Wikis in the Classroom

An essay by Melinda Johnson

A wiki is a special type of Web site. On a Web site, information is published by an author and made available on pages that can be viewed from any Internet connection using Web browser software. By publishing information to a wiki, you give users the option to not only access and read your information, but also to interact with the document and contribute their own ideas.

The largest and most well-known wiki is Wikipedia. Imagine a library reference shelf with a series of year-old encyclopedias. Imagine opening those encyclopedias and finding that other users had clipped together new sources of information in order to update the outdated material. Wikipedia works much the same way.

I was a student of the '90s. School technology consisted of filmstrips and overhead projectors. It was a really big deal when a teacher got a computer; by sixth grade they were teaching me how to play Oregon Trail in my technology class. When teachers brought the Internet into our classrooms, we were told that it was the greatest research tool of all time. In fact, I was taught that the material printed in the encyclopedias was too outdated to be reliable and I was instructed to verify the information online. Even before the Web was popular, we were still teaching students to use a multi-step verification process. What's changed?

Fast-forward about ten years. Working in university-level library reference, my job was to help students find resources for their research papers. I noticed that college freshmen were coming to the library with the notion that online resources must be verified in print, but all print resources are considered scholarly. I did my best to teach them differently, to explain that the majority of print resources are not peer-reviewed and are not considered scholarly. Apparently their teachers had been telling them otherwise. Their arguments helped me to realize what had caused the confusion: In our teachers' attempts to discourage students from composing sloppy, under-researched assignments, they were beginning to assign what I like to call "information quotas." Every reference librarian has heard it: "I need to find five sources and only one can be a Web site." I don't want to blame everything on information quotas (and yes, as a teacher, I am guilty of using them too). But besides giving students the wrong idea about the accuracy of the written word, information quotas are responsible for the trend of bibliography padding (a student's last-minute effort to serve up the required number of sources without having actually consulted the material).

Teachers must communicate the integrity of peer-review because undergrad students still aren't getting it. I have an idea: teach students about the importance of peer-review by letting them go through a similar process with their own written work (hint, wiki, hint). Let your students be each other's own colleagues and experts. A dangerous concept? Here's why I think it would work:

1. The original author would be more careful and thoughtful before publishing her first draft. Unlike our peers, teachers are very forgiving. I worked much harder on papers that I knew would be peer-reviewed because I didn't want my peers to be able to correct me.
2. Papers would be proofread. Enough said.
3. Students would get practice verifying sources. Have the original author include her own sources in the bibliography, and then have the second student confirm the information and post her own secondary sources.

As an added bonus, students could get practice in polishing their Web personalities. They compose and post messages frequently; how often do they pause to proofread or consider the consequences before publishing their ideas? It reflects badly on them (and their school) when they post thoughtless gibberish on the Web. Publishing research papers in wiki format could reinforce the idea that online writing need not be garbage.

A final thought on Wikipedia. If enough teachers and students use the site, it should remain fairly accurate. I use the site for locating casual information relating to news and pop culture. I see no reason why the site should be forbidden as an academic tool. After all, Wikipedia does encourage collaboration, thoughtful writing, and peer-review. Students should be encouraged to use Wikipedia only as a starting point to get ideas and sources for a research project. And yes, I believe the site should be included in the bibliography if a Wikipedia entry was consulted as part of the discovery process. I wouldn't let it count toward the information quota, though.